The latest from the National desk

Oklahoma jury asks to see prison quarters of ex-warden's wife

September 20, 2011 | 4:11
pm

Jurors charged with deciding whether a former Oklahoma prison deputy warden's wife helped a convicted killer escape or whether she was kidnapped want to see where she was living at the prison when they met.

Jurors asked the court Tuesday if they could tour the home on the prison grounds where Bobbi Parker lived with her husband, Randy Parker, according to the Associated Press.

Parker, 49, could face up to a decade in prison if the jury decides she helped Randolph Franklin Dial escape from the Oklahoma State Reformatory in Granite in 1994.

Prosecutors say Parker fell in love with Dial while they worked together at a prison pottery program held in the garage of the Parker home.

Both Dial, who died in 2007, and Parker said that he kidnapped her.

Jurors began deliberating Monday after listening to months of testimony from scores of witnesses. In addition to requesting the tour of the prison grounds, the jury Tuesday asked to review video shot by Texas police of the van the pair were using when they disappeared.

Parker and Dial went missing from the prison on Aug. 30, 1994. Nearly 11 years later, authorities located them at a mobile home on a ranch in the East Texas town of Campti, where they had been living as husband and wife under assumed names.

Dial, who died behind bars at age 62, maintained until his death that he had abducted Parker. Prosecutors never charged Dial with kidnapping.

Photo: Oklahoma prison escapee Randolph Franklin Dial, shown in this file photo, was arrested at a mobile home in Campti, Texas, in 2005. Dial had been convicted of the 1981 murder of a karate instructor but escaped from the Oklahoma State Reformatory in 1994 with Bobbi Parker, the deputy warden's wife, who was found living with him. Dial died in 2007, and Parker is now on trial in Oklahoma on suspicion of aiding Dial's escape. Credit: Shelby County Sheriff's Office/Associated Press.